Hot Bodies, Cold Values: “Love Island” Is The Anti-Romance Show Of The Summer

The seventh season of the American version of the UK reality show is back, and it’s raunchier than ever. The real-time reality show may be a commitment to watch, with six hour-long episodes a week, but that hasn’t stopped millions from becoming obsessed, myself included.

As a seasoned reality TV viewer, I can safely say that Love Island is one of the trashiest, yet most entertaining shows I’ve ever seen. While it provides a perfect sense of escapism, it lacks actual romance and demonstrates everything wrong with our current dating culture. Let's explore why that is.

How Does Love Island Work? 

On paper, it’s a dating show. In practice, it’s a masterclass in emotional detachment, performative attraction, and commitment avoidance. Love Island doesn't appear to be much different from other popular dating shows like Bachelor in Paradise, but beneath the surface, the show’s format and end goal stand out. Instead of a beach in Mexico, contestants live in a lavish villa in Fiji where they’re supposed to explore and form romantic connections with contestants of the opposite sex. Every few days, there’s a recoupling ceremony, where contestants choose if they want to stay in their current couple or explore another. If they are left with no match at the end of the ceremony, they risk being eliminated from the villa.

The format mimics dating apps: couple up based on looks first, ask questions later. New contestants, aka “bombshells,” arrive regularly to stir the pot, tempting existing couples to stray. Unlike BIP, there’s no engagement or even serious commitment expected at the end, just a popularity contest where the audience votes for their favorite couple, who split a $100,000 prize. Most dates happen in the villa, and contestants are required to share beds immediately, even if they’ve just met.

Aside from chaotic recouplings, Love Island is infamous for its "challenges." These aren’t designed to build emotional intimacy; they’re an excuse for contestants to make out, grind, and simulate sex with people outside their couples. Often, the challenges are more pornographic than playful which is particularly jarring when they occur on night one.

But this only happens when the contestants get to know each other, right? Nope, the show’s first challenge had women kissing two men before deciding who to couple up and share a bed with—an awkward start to what’s supposed to be a romance show. Bella-A, notably, kissed both men on the cheek. A rare display of restraint.

While one could argue that our culture is so desensitized to sex and intimacy that this shouldn’t be a big deal, kissing and sharing a bed are both extremely intimate things to do with anyone, let alone someone you just met. It may be politically incorrect to admit in 2025, but there’s still a big difference between how male and female brains process intimacy. Kissing and sleeping next to someone can release oxytocin (the bonding hormone) in both sexes, but women typically release more, and faster. That’s not sexist, it’s biology.

Sexologist Tonya M. Bass writes, “It can be very common to feel an attachment to someone after sex since the brain releases oxytocin during arousal, stimulation of the genitals and nipples, during intercourse or orgasm. The release of this hormone after being physically intimate may cause a feeling of attachment and closeness.”

In short, the very structure of Love Island encourages women to form superficial bonds with men they have just met before having any kind of meaningful conversations with them. Emotional safety, exclusivity, mystery? Traded in for steamy bed-sharing on night one.

Unfortunately, this can result in behaviors like jealousy and becoming attached to someone quickly if you're intimate, and no contestant demonstrated this more on the current season of Love Island than Huda Mustafa, a 24-year-old single mom and fitness coach from North Carolina.

Hurricane Huda Hits The Island

If Love Island is a mirror to our most toxic dating instincts, Huda is the season’s full-length reflection. From the moment she stepped into the villa, the 24-year-old single mom and fitness coach from North Carolina locked eyes with Jeremiah, a 25-year-old model from Seattle, and instantly claimed him like he was the last good man on Earth.

The chemistry was undeniable, but so was the dysfunction. What started as a flirty, steamy connection spiraled quickly into jealousy, tantrums, and full-blown possessiveness. By day three, she was policing who kissed Jeremiah in challenges, shutting down attention from other men, and berating him over... pancakes. What could have been a fan-favorite couple turned into a case study in anxious attachment, broadcast nightly in HD.

Of course, Jeremiah didn’t help. His passive encouragement of her behavior, mixed with a complete lack of boundaries, made him less victim and more enabler. But Huda took the spotlight, demanding loyalty in a villa literally built to test it.

When producers handed the power to the audience and let viewers vote on which new bombshells should pair up with which OGs, the message was loud and clear: we’re over Huda and Jeremiah. The public voted for Jeremiah to couple up with newcomer Iris, and what ensued was arguably the greatest crash out of the year.

Huda cussed out and screamed at Jeremiah for daring to explore a connection with Iris, and after losing her mind and terrorizing the villa, she tried to manipulate Jeremiah into getting back with her, using her trust issues as an excuse for her actions. 

To be fair, it’s not hard to understand why. The villa had trained her brain to bond fast. Two weeks of sharing a bed, showering together, and getting physically intimate with a man she barely knew had rewired her nervous system. She didn’t just like Jeremiah, her body was telling her they were in a committed relationship. That’s not “crazy girl” energy; that’s human biology colliding with a hyper-sexualized format designed to fry the female nervous system.

Pop culture writers agree, specifically Shannon Keating of Vulture. She writes, “Huda is very young. She’s a 24-year-old mother to a daughter she had at 19 and hasn’t dated anyone while raising her child. She fell hard for Jeremiah on day one — whether for the man himself, or more so the idea of him, doesn’t really matter.”

Keating continues, “Being delusional isn’t a crime. And though some of the guys keep arguing that the 'point' of Love Island is dating around, so Jeremiah and Huda are therefore being 'scammy,' the only actual 'point' of the show (that is, winning it) means making it to the end by convincing viewers you’re in the most genuine relationship — or, at least, the one viewers most want to root for. If Huda believes she’s already found her man, what, exactly, is the problem? At issue isn’t her authenticity or lack of it — it’s her ridiculous standards and casual cruelty, which ultimately push Jeremiah away.”

Huda’s downfall wasn’t just about bad behavior, it was about how easily our culture confuses early intensity with real intimacy. Less than a week after Huda’s crash out, the audience voted for their favorite male and female contestant on the island, leaving the bottom three of each sex vulnerable to elimination via their peers. The guys voted for Jeremiah to leave the villa, giving Huda a fresh start. Like many other fans, I was cautiously optimistic for Huda’s redemption, but all hope was lost after she displayed her true colors during Sunday’s “Hearts On Fire” challenge.

“Hearts On Fire” Challenge Exposes Jealousy, Hypocrisy, and Everything Wrong With Love Island

Just when you thought Love Island couldn’t outdo its own degeneracy, the “Hearts On Fire” challenge came in hot, literally. Each contestant strapped on a heart rate monitor while their partner performed a sultry solo routine, then proceeded to grind, straddle, and tongue-kiss other Islanders to see who could get pulses racing the most. If your idea of foreplay is competitive group dry-humping in a neon-lit villa, you’re in luck.

What began as raunchy quickly morphed into a full-blown sociological experiment in jealousy, detachment, and emotional warfare. Because nothing screams “healthy modern romance” like watching the person you sleep next to simulate sex with someone else while you cheer from the sidelines.

While plenty of lines seemed to be crossed, nobody crossed the line quite like Huda. Dressed as a sexy French maid, Huda invited fellow contestant Ace (who, small detail, is coupled up with her best friend in the house, Chelley) onto the floor where they made out and simulated sex in front of everyone. Chelley was visibly uncomfortable, saying that Huda “took it too far” by singling Ace out, especially when she knew he and Chelley had one of the strongest connections. Huda defended herself by saying it was “just a challenge,” but fellow contestant Pepe chimed in with, “That looked like a little more than just a challenge.” Things only got worse when it was revealed that Huda raised Ace’s heart rate more than any other contestant.

It’s emotional sabotage packaged as entertainment.

Here’s the thing: it’s not just the over-the-top performances or the fact that contestants are goaded into dry-humping strangers on national TV, it’s the emotional gaslighting that follows. The show manufactures jealousy and tension under the guise of fun, only to turn around and call contestants “insecure” when they react like humans instead of robots.

Huda’s hypocrisy was especially glaring. Just episodes earlier, she was practically threatening bodily harm to any girl who dared kiss Jeremiah during a challenge. But now? Now that she’s the one crossing boundaries, it’s suddenly “part of the game.” This isn’t just a double standard, it’s a perfect snapshot of everything wrong with the show’s format: performative intimacy, emotional whiplash, and zero room for genuine connection.

While some contestants claim to be in solid couples, they all insist they’re “open to exploring” other connections—until feelings start getting hurt. During the challenge, everyone was eager to turn up the heat with new partners, but jealousy quickly bubbled to the surface. Most of the women, and even a few of the men, visibly cringed watching their person get a little too close to someone else. And honestly, who wouldn’t? Watching someone you’ve bonded with get intimate with someone else right in front of you isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s borderline cruel. The show sells it as harmless fun, but really, it’s emotional sabotage packaged as entertainment. Love Island doesn’t need to poke at raw nerves to keep us watching, but it sure seems to enjoy doing it.

Love Island vs Bachelor in Paradise

Love Island is often compared to Bachelor in Paradise; both drop singles into a dreamy location with the hope of finding love, and both thrive on the drama of unexpected arrivals. But where BIP leans into emotional connection and gives contestants space to build something meaningful, Love Island tends to fast-track intimacy, whether it’s kissing, sharing a bed, or more, often before the contestants are even comfortable. The environment prioritizes chemistry over compatibility, and deeper conversations rarely make the final cut.

Is there a chance that Love Island contestants have deeper conversations about their goals and values when the cameras aren’t rolling? Maybe. But let’s be honest: long-term love has never really been the point.

While the relationship success rate of both shows is low, BIP has created several long-term couples, often resulting in marriage and kids. Yet only a handful of Love Island contestants are still together, and none have gotten married.

Why compare the two shows? BIP is proof that things don’t have to get overly sexual to create a compelling reality dating show.

Gen Z, Hookup Culture, and Romance 

Before writing this article, I rewatched the first episode to get a feel for what the contestants were looking for going into filming the show. Almost all of the female contestants are adamant that they crave romance and chivalry in a relationship, but romance and chivalry seem to be absent entirely.

Plenty of Gen Z’ers have made it clear that they’re done with hookup culture and dating apps. One of the best examples is a viral TikTok of podcast host Hope Moquin calling out how women can’t win in hookup culture. She says, “Hooking up is the most intimate level that you can be with somebody. Hooking up just to fill your emptiness will always leave you twice as empty when it’s done and over with. Sleeping around casually will always lead you to forget your worth of who you are as an individual. Sleeping with somebody does not and will not make somebody want to stay with you. Casually sleeping around does not lead you toward wholeness.”

Moquin continues, “There was a point in my life where the hookup scene was where I was at and was what I did. Sometimes I thought I had to do it to be accepted, that if I didn’t do it, then I would be looked over, and the other times I thought that since I was already in that lifestyle, then what was the point of stopping and getting out of it?”

The irony of Love Island’s popularity is that it mirrors the very dating culture so many viewers claim to hate. Its format is basically a dating app come to life; couple up based on looks first, ask questions later. The emphasis on surface-level attraction over genuine connection strips away any real potential for romance, while the constant influx of new arrivals and temptations encourages behavior that’s more chaotic than committed. In the end, it glamorizes the exact patterns that leave people disillusioned with modern dating in the first place.

So why is the show so popular? Honestly, because it’s wildly entertaining, and sometimes, watching other people’s drama unfold is the perfect way to decompress after a long day. Trashy reality TV has a unique appeal: it offers escapism, yes, but it also makes us feel better about our own situations. Compared to the chaos, toxicity, and over-the-top antics on screen, our own relationships (or lack thereof) suddenly feel a lot more stable and sane. Love Island may be addictive, but that doesn’t mean we should treat it as a dating playbook. It’s entirely possible to enjoy the show while also recognizing that it glamorizes some of the worst parts of modern dating culture. Watch it, laugh at it, yell at the screen—but don’t take notes.